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Universalism and Catholic Totalitarianism

One of the principal qualities claimed for Christianity as it emerged and separated from Judaism was universalism. The Jewish followers of Jesus carried over from their parent religion virtually everything except its sectarian character which was identified with Jewish nationality. Christians said that the loving Jewish Father whom Jesus preached was open and inviting to everyone because he was their father too, the “God” in whom they lived and moved and had their being, the “God” that all people groped for, whatever their nation and religion.

But once established in the Greco-Roman world, class structure took over and Christianity itself succumbed to the forces of authority and control and became sectarian. Authority requires boundaries and identity. This occurred even before the Roman Imperial marriage conferred divinity on the Catholic Church. In fact, it was the sectarian / authoritarian nature of the version of Christianity that had evolved in post-apostolic times that made the union desirable to both partners. The Church became an apt instrument of Roman theocratic rule because its boundaries were not only fixed, they were lethally obligatory and held carefully in place by an authority for whom such control redounded to personal prestige. It had to be clear who was inside and who was outside, and outside the Church there was no salvation. There was nothing invitational or open about it. It was either the Church or damnation. What had earlier been free became a debt due upon receipt. It had the ultimate effect of making the Empire and the Church commensurate with one another and Roman Law divine. It assured the authorities that compliance with the rule of law would be sanctioned by a level of punishment for the disobedient far beyond anything they could bring to bear on earth: eternal torment in hell. Better than constabularies in every town; each citizen policed himself. The legions could be kept along the Rhine and the Danube.

The Romans liked to project the image that their empire embraced the whole world. It was propaganda; they knew better. Caesar stopped his conquests at the Rhine; the entire Germanic and Slavic world east of France and north of the Danube was not part of the empire. The Romans dismissed them as barbarians, but they were still there. Going eastward from Anatolia (modern day Turkey) the world of the Persians and beyond them the Indians, once part of Alexander’s domains, also lay outside of Rome’s control and often challenged its eastern border.

Regardless, Roman Christianity, named “Catholic” because it was not just some local church but the totality, became the official religion of the empire and therefore “everyone’s” religion everywhere Rome ruled. Hence, the Church also touted itself as “universal.” But there was nothing universal about it. The empire that had earlier been completely pluralist and open to all religions, under the Christian ascendancy became adamantly intolerant. All other religions were outlawed. The plethora of cults from the traditional Mediterranean gods, the homegrown mystery cults of Demeter and Orpheus on which Paul modeled Christian initiation, the imported mysteries of Isis from Egypt, Tammuz from Mesopotamia, Mithraism, Manichaeism, to diaspora Judaism, and all the varied dissident Christian sects who disagreed with the “official” version and were called “heretics,” after centuries worshipping freely throughout the empire were all driven underground by Theodosius’ decree in 380. Suddenly it became a state crime to adhere to any religion but the emperor’s.

Impressed into service to a theocratic empire, Christianity took on all the characteristics of theocracy: it expected that its moral and ritual program would be enforced by the “secular arm” and dissenters punished. Hence, even today we are subjected to the demand of Catholic bishops that their people vote only for politicians who commit to translating the Church’s moral code into legislation. Christianity transformed its inspiring narratives and family legends into codified dogma and, item by item, made them the litmus test of membership in the sect, outside of which there was only weeping and gnashing of teeth. Exile and excommunication were parallel punishments meted out by the state for “heresy.” And later, in the Middle Ages, when fear of the devil surpassed the fear of “God” as a motivation for religious compliance, execution by burning at the stake was the prescribed antidote for failure to respect the boundaries of the sacred: outside the Church there was only the devil.

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True universalism respects all religions as pathways to full human development — what has traditionally been called “holiness.” One of the indications today that the Roman sect is not universalist is that it insists that whatever holiness may be found anywhere in the world among other religions is actually due to “grace” that comes through the “merits of Christ” and mediated to humankind in a hidden way through the Catholic Church. In an official teaching entitled Dominus Jesus published in 2000 by then Cardinal Ratzinger, it was clearly stated that anything of truth that may be found in the writings of any other religion anywhere in the world was exclusively the prerogative of the Roman Catholic Church to discern and decide. The perennial “missionary” efforts of the Church, often justified under the fiction of “universalism” is simply a repeat of the same imperative: the Catholic Church alone is “God’s” personally founded institution, the only path to human fullness, the only escape from eternal punishment. It is not optional. “Mission’s” purpose was supposedly to lay out the case for voluntary conversion. It didn’t always happen like that. Having the “truth” made Catholic missionaries less concerned about free choice than eternal damnation. An ignorant “native” saved from damnation by baptism, the missionaries reasoned, would be inclined to overlook any coercion applied on his behalf. It was, after all, an act of love … and error has no rights. Mission did not include encouragement to deepen and practice one’s own ancestral religion.

Supporting other people’s religions is universalism; obliging everyone to abandon their religions and join yours is totalitarianism. They may seem similar because in each case everyone seems to be of the same mind, but it is a superficial similarity focused on externals alone. Totalitarianism is anti-human because it leaves no room for religious expression that may correspond to the peculiarity of regions or clans or individuals. Totalitarianism doesn’t respect others’ names for “God” because it refuses to acknowledge that its own is only metaphor. Totalitarian sectarianism is the handmaiden of empire, the agent of theocracy, and most often co-exists with a tyrannical despotism that can be monarchical, oligarchic and even, as in the case of modern fascist versions, “democratic.” We can’t forget it was an Athenian democracy that condemned Socrates to death in the name of religion for encouraging the young people to think for themselves. He caused them to disrespect the gods.

But in the case of Catholic totalitarianism there is nothing democratic about it. After 500 years of entrenched and unopposed Papalism since the Protestant Reformation, Catholics have come to identify their “brand” of Christianity with the Pope. The identification of the Church with the person of the Pope, an absolute autocratic monarch, was the result of the defeat and demise of the Conciliar movement in the 15th century.

Conciliarism maintains that the Church has been traditionally ruled by Councils since earliest times and that the Pope’s “primacy” is one of respect, not of autocratic power. Indeed, when lust for Papal power had resulted in a Great Schism starting in 1378 in which first two, then three men claimed to be Pope at the same time, and all three had support among the monarchs of Europe, it was Councils in 1408 and 1414 called by the Conciliarists that resolved the problem. Once the Schism was settled and the Papacy restored to one man, however, the Pope’s autocratic power was so great that within thirty years he was able to destroy the movement that had preserved the papacy and prevented the Church from breaking apart. It is significant that half a century after that the Church did break apart, and “Councils,” eviscerated by the Popes, were powerless to stop it. Resentment over the derogation of the Conciliar movement and the perennial belief that “reform” would only come to the Church through Councils, sustained the “Protestants” who were convinced that the reforms they introduced would someday be validated by an Ecumenical Council for the whole Church. They were not interested in starting new churches. That belief never materialized. The Council that was called to deal with the Protestants met in the city of Trent in northern Italy almost half a century after Luther’s revolt began; it showed no interest in reconciling with the Reformers and reaffirmed the absolute autocratic power of the Pope. It was the beginning of the Catholic “brand.”

Catholics have become so accustomed to the idolatrous worship of the Papacy as a “divine” institution that in 1870, when the Pope, in complete control of the first Vatican Council, declared himself to be “infallible,” an outraged world was doubly shocked to see that among Catholics, however intelligent, educated and well intentioned they might be, it barely raised an eyebrow. At this point in time the Papacy is seared into everyone’s brain as an intrinsic element of the Catholic “brand.” Institutional attachment, now, is determined not by scriptural fidelity, consistency with the message of Jesus, compassionate embrace of the suffering victims of injustice or any other religious motivation, but rather by the evocation of an organizational “identity” made recognizable by the display of its brand. Ecclesiastical authority activates its ancient role of maintaining the boundaries that guarantee “identity” and of all authorities, the one simultaneously most cherished and feared is the Roman Catholic Papacy. Like all other anti-evangelical authority, it is a correlate of sectarianism.

There is a great deal written about Catholic “universalism” as if it actually existed. It is all projection. It is fiction: stories that come full blown from the imagination of well-meaning religious who accurately discern the spirit of Jesus’ ancient message in the scriptures. Indeed universalism is implicit in Jesus’ invitation to trust his Father’s endlessly forgiving embrace. One writer uses the word catholicity to refer to a sense of wholeness meant to include in the Father’s embrace not only the totality of humanity, but the entire cosmos. But don’t be fooled. The last place you will ever encounter such attitudes being lived in the flesh is in the organization known to all as the Catholic Church. In this case the word catholicity becomes something of a sleight-of-hand: it makes you think that the wholeness you seek will be found there. The writer, surely, is not being intentionally deceptive. She honestly imagines that the Church that supports her, wants to live the authentic spirit of Jesus’ message, and therefore wants to be catholic, as much as she does. But it cannot do it because an authority invested in its own power and prestige must protect the boundaries. It cannot be universalist. It must convince those who are “inside” that “God’s” love is NOT free, by distinguishing them precisely from those who are “outside” and have no access to “God’s” embrace as they do.

Imagine if “God’s” forgiveness were available to everyone free of all cost and obligation. How could you control the boundaries? How would you identify your organization? How would you get people to obey you? There would be nothing to do but celebrate! Jesus understood the confusion. So in order to make himself perfectly clear he proposed, on more than one occasion, a radically different kind of authority.

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the last of all and the servant of all.” Then He had a little child stand among them. Taking the child in His arms, He said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in My name welcomes Me, and whoever welcomes Me welcomes not only Me, but the One who sent Me.”… (Mk 9:35ff)

The scene of Jesus surrounded by children is one of the most beloved in the gospels. But we fail to notice that Jesus’ used children to make what is probably the most radical and universally disregarded point of his message. Jesus said if you exercise authority you must do it like a child. Note: Children do not command one another. They exercise leadership and organize multitudes by inviting others to play with them … and no one is left out.

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2 comments on “Universalism and Catholic Totalitarianism”

Your reminder that history can teach us our true roots–our real DNA–offers hope that the followers of Jesus may emerge from the shadows of the Roman Empire to play and serve and be Children of our Father–and not a club with membership and a lengthy code of detaied behaviors to observe. “If you love Me, you will keep my commandments”–and it is not the other way around. Forgiveness, kindness, caring and so on flow from love, and do not normally create it–your outlook, your “spirit” comes first.

Whenever I celebrate the Eucharist, even if ‘intentionally’, somewhat after Teilhard de Chardin’s “Mass on the World”, I include the story of the Syrophoenician woman’s engagement with Jesus in our Gospel. Seems there has always been a high road of ‘mission’ (to the fore and worthy of critique/condemnation in this latest post), and the low road represented by the Syrophoenician in Jesus’ presence (with her evocation of the Master’s table). The low road has always been closer to faith’s water table, and has been travelled by multitudes of ordinary folks putting together their good works well watered in simple faith.
Thus do I always pray in thanks for the anthropological awakening that has occurred within movements like that of liberation theology. It is good to remember that sequence of episode, ritual, and creed highlighted by the longer view of history seen from the low road. Episode/action has to come before ritual and confession of faith.